Best Tsunami of Discontent

David Farrow

Staff Pick

Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. may have won his re-election by a landslide, but his four opponents certainly kept the debate lively in the months leading up to November. None were rowdier than David Farrow, a former News and Courier journalist who announced his candidacy in August with a feisty press release: "There is a very strong undercurrent of discontent that isn't necessarily publicized. That undercurrent is growing into an undertow, which I believe could foreshadow a tsunami. Mayor Riley is no longer the unflappable, extremely popular mayor that he was in the years following Hurricane Hugo." Over the course of the campaign, Farrow called Riley a big-government statist and accused the College of Charleston, which receives public funding, of effectively endorsing Riley by allowing him to speak at a Political Science Club meeting in October. In the end, Farrow's tsunami-surfing earned him a third-place finish with 3 percent of the vote.